Speculative realisms negate the human-nonhuman distinction as an anti-representation move.

Evidence

The framework of algorithms—discrete quanta and their near-infinite serialization—quickens the many trends in contemporary theory that comport themselves as anti-mediation “realism.” The movement of “speculative realism” has its origins in negating the distinction between the human and the nonhuman, unbinding the finitude that might divide philosophical apperception from worldly matter like rocks. Connectedness overcomes distance in the work of Levi Bryant and Graham Harman, among many others, where ontologies of vitality ensure continuity between humans and other citizens in “the democracy of objects.” “Vitality” and “vibrant matter” are the proper core of philosophical attention for Jane Bennett, who borrows from travelogues and literary sources to deem her method “realism.” Similarly, Karen Barad offers “agential realism” as a disputation of “representation”: philosophers too often focus on epistemology at the expense of ontology, but truly enlightened theory cuts through the chaff of representation to revel in the real entanglings of “human and nonhuman, material and discursive, natural and cultural factors.” These insistent copulatives encode the continuity of immediacy, and their regnant theological guide (whom we have already encountered, Bruno Latour) deems the epistemology adequate to this “and-ing” horizontalism and vitalist immanence “a more realistic realism.” — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 298

Categorization

• DEFINE: Provides concrete definitions of speculative realism, agential realism, and vibrant matter — exactly the named aesthetic/theoretical features the reader wants to be able to identify in real works.
• SEED: The ‘insistent copulatives encode the continuity of immediacy’ observation is a promising angle for an essay on how and-and-and syntax itself performs immediacy in theory prose.
• XREF: connects to: Critics of anthropocentrism conflate rejecting superiority with denying human distinctness. — Val Plumwood, Feminism and the Mastery of Nature, 84